35. Tourmaline Part II: The King of Tourmaline...?

In this episode of FacetNation, Simon and Lucinda delve into the fascinating world of tourmaline, particularly focusing on its significance in San Diego's gemstone history and the impact of the Dowager Empress Cixi on the pink tourmaline market. They explore the rise and fall of the tourmaline industry, the unique characteristics of the stone, and the methods used to identify it. The conversation is rich with historical anecdotes and insights into the gemmology field, making it an engaging listen for enthusiasts and newcomers alike. Also in this episode, Lucinda and Simon delve into the fascinating world of tourmaline, exploring its color variations, treatments, and the rise of Paraiba tourmaline as a highly sought-after gemstone. They discuss the geological origins of Paraiba tourmaline, its global appeal, and highlight famous examples, including the Ethereal Carolina Divine Paraiba. The episode concludes with a look at the stunning Liddicoat tourmaline slice, showcasing the beauty and complexity of this remarkable gemstone.


Tourmaline is a significant gemstone with various types.
San Diego has a rich history of gemstone mining.
The Dowager Empress Cixi played a crucial role in popularising pink tourmaline.
Zixi's love for pink tourmaline influenced the gemstone market.
The decline of the tourmaline market followed Cixi's death.
Testing tourmaline requires specific techniques due to its colour variations.
Tourmaline can be mistaken for other gemstones.
Historical context enhances the value of gemstones.
Gemstones often have fascinating stories behind them.
Understanding gemstone history can enrich appreciation for them. Some stones show two completely different colours.
Watermelon tourmalines need both pleochroic responses listed.
Tourmaline can be treated to enhance colour.
Paraiba tourmaline is the most valuable type.
The discovery of Paraiba tourmaline changed the market.
Paraiba tourmaline's price skyrocketed due to rarity.
Geological events created the conditions for tourmaline formation.
Nigerian and Mozambican tourmalines are similar to Brazilian Paraiba.
Famous tourmalines often have historical significance.
The Liddicoat tourmaline slice is a stunning example of tourmaline beauty.

The Allure of Tourmaline: A Gemstone Journey
Unveiling San Diego's Gemstone Secrets
The Legacy of the Dowager Empress Cixi
Tourmaline: From Mine to Market


"She banned foot binding."
"It's a serious bottleneck."
"It's called Heitorita."
"It looks like stained glass."


Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Tourmaline Part Two
02:30 Exploring San Diego's Gemstone History
05:57 The Dowager Empress Cixi and Pink Tourmaline
17:20 The Decline of the Tourmaline Market
18:22 Testing Tourmaline: Identification Techniques
22:01 Understanding Tourmaline's Colour Variations
25:01 The Treatment and Enhancement of Tourmaline
26:17 The Discovery of Paraiba Tourmaline
30:39 The Rise of Paraiba Tourmaline's Value
34:00 Geological Origins of Paraiba Tourmaline
38:25 The Global Appeal of Paraiba Tourmaline
39:05 Famous Paraiba Tourmalines and Their Significance
42:30 The Liddicoat Tourmaline Slice and Its Beauty

tourmaline, gemstones, San Diego, Dowager Empress Cixi, gemmology, pink tourmaline, gemstone testing, history, gem market, California tourmaline, Paraiba tourmaline, gemstone treatment, colour variations, gemmology, gemstone value, geological origins, famous gemstones, Liddicoat tourmaline

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to Facet Nation, a gemology podcast. My name is Simon.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

And I'm Lisinda.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

And today we are going to wrap up our previous episode on tourmaline. This is tourmaline part two. We're going to get into the different types of tourmaline. Well, one specifically, which is quite an important tourmaline. Two, two. One in one in particular, which is very important, and then we're going to talk about another one as well. But the important one is important because it's very valuable. Some of us like the other one more, so and that's fine. But it's still very important in the gem world because it's very valuable and like very sought after and difficult to get hold of. So we're going to tell you all about it.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

We are indeed. Of course, you can join the ride now, you'll probably be fine. But if you did want more background and context, especially about tourmaline generally as a material, head back a few weeks to our previous episode. It's episode 33. Give it a listen, and then you can come back here. We will be waiting for you in the infinite sands of the internet.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yes. And actually, on that note, if you haven't listened to the previous episodes, like these are, you know when you watch like a those sort of crappy American TV series where there's like a there's like a general sort of through line, like the X-Files, for example. There's a through line.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Every episode has its own plot, but there's also an overarching plot.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

You can listen to an episode you watch an episode or listen to one of our episodes in isolation, but actually there is a bit of context that maybe we've spoken about previously, which might be useful in your understanding if you listen to all of them. So I encourage you, if you are that way inclined, to go back and start from the beginning and listen to them all. It was going to take you a really long time, but I would say very rewarding. But you know, I would agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

And and and and rewarding and entertaining.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, most importantly, entertaining. And I think there are probably a couple of people out there that would endorse that. So if there is anyone out there that would endorse that and likes to would like to uh share that on their Instagram and say, I endorse the fact that you should listen to all 34, 35 or whatever episodes of Vascination in order, then please do that because it would help us. So please.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Yes. Whether you've listened to the previous episode or not, we're happy to have you here. Should we get right into it, Simon?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Let us get into it.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Any news and views before we begin?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

None news and views.

unknown 2:31

Okay, great.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

Then, as we said last time, we said we will meet you in San Diego, and so we shall, but not San Diego as you know it. So, Simon, in general, do English people know about San Diego?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

As in, do they know it exists as a place south of Los Angeles?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

So, from my understanding, there is a baseball team called the Padres.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

And it's quite a young town, which is quite cool. There's a lot of like student vibes going on there. My friend has just been there. He's just come back from there. He had a really great time. He went to see the the Padres, who I understand play at Petco Park. Um, are you a Padres fan? Do you like it?

SPEAKER_02 3:11

My entire family is from San Diego. So my grandpa was a Padres fan. I went and saw the Padres with him when I was a little kid. I, of course, am from Los Angeles, so the Dodgers are really my team. But I don't like baseball. It's slightly boring.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Dodgers the Dodgers win.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Yeah, I mean, we're pretty good. And there's like the Dodger dog, which is a hot dog, which is excellent.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

I would consider myself a Diamondbacks fan because I went to see them when I was in Arizona. So I sort of.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

I was gonna say that sounds like an Arizona team to me.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

And I like a snake. I like the logo, it's cool.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Nice. Excellent.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Well, as someone is kind of too much sport, too much sport. We're ruining this podcast with talking about sports.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Too much sport. I don't even like sports. So let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

I don't know why we keep talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

So San Diego, as Simon so rightly points out, is south of LA. It's kind of halfway between Los Angeles and the Mexico border. Um so my grandma used to drive to Mexico to buy things that are illegal in California. She's dead now, so she won't go to prison for me saying that. But it is it's a beach town, but it's also a desert town. So it's kind of out in the scrubland. And one thing that I did not know about San Diego is it is also a hotbed of gemstones. And this all becomes really clear at the turn of the 20th century. So, Simon, if you will join me, the year is 1907. The location is San Diego. And for the second time in California's history, there is a rush on. It's not the gold rush, which is how we became the golden state, it is a gem rush. Now, did you know of San Diego as a locality for gemstones before we saw that man talk about it?

SPEAKER_00 4:46

No, not really. But I understand it's it's a hot bed.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

It is. Do you know what kind of stones you can find there?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

I shan't spoil the notes that you've written and let you tell us that.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Because fair enough. So um you can find all kinds of stuff there. Paz, Bernick, Kunzite, Morganite, Agate, and of course, the reason for the season, the reason that we are here talking about San Diego at all, Mormeline. By the way, this is all courtesy of an article by David Fetterman in Modern Jewelry. It came out in September of 1991. So I definitely did fact check it just to make sure relevant.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Okay. Yeah. Because that's actually a long time ago. It doesn't seem like it, but it is.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I know. I was one year old when it was written. I am now not. But it does all check out, and it's obviously all dealing with like long, long past history. So I didn't know when my family was growing up in San Diego and my grandma's chihuahua was getting snatched by coyotes that the hills around girl, everyone's everyone's dog was getting snatched by coyotes. It's just a thing. The hills around San Diego are chock full of gemstones. And lots of people from the end of the 19th century into the 20th century were discovering this and exploiting it. So there were lots of prospectors in the area. And this is kind of some a piece of California history that goes back to the gold rush. Lots of people came over in the gold rush. And by the turn of the 20th century, there were prospectors in the desert outside of San Diego trying to find gemstones. And they did, and they found a lot of it. And specifically, they found a lot of really beautiful pink tourmaline because there's just loads of it there. And it was a great time to find it because across the world there was one woman who loved pink tourmaline and she had bottomless wealth essentially to create from scratch, from absolutely nothing, a totally new status symbol. Simon, tell me a little bit about the Dowager Empress Zishi.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

I will tell you a little bit about the Dowager Empress Zishi. I'm glad you said Zishi before I had to read it and pronounce it.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

So this is not a special interest of yours?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

I mean, it is now. So basically, we're going to take a brief foray into historic Chinese politics, as we always do. It's conquistadors.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

We do quite often the Chinese.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Because I mean, like they're obviously like involved in lots of shit. So like it's it's perfectly real. So yes, I would like to introduce you to the Dowager Empress Zishi. And apparently you read a biography of hers.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

This is it, that's the lady.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Alright, okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

So if you are not if you're yeah, if you're listening on Spotify, she was a very glamorous woman to say the least.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Okay. And uh so in thousands of years of Chinese history, Zishi occupies a very rarefied role. Now, she was never declared emperor. The only woman to rule China as emperor in her own right was Wu Zhe Tan.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Wu Zetan?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Zetan. Yeah, okay. Well, apologies to the Chinese listeners.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Wu Zetian, maybe. I don't know. We'll ask Penny.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Penny, please let us know. Like, tell us, tell us whether we're right or not. We're probably not. And like Wu before her, Xi was a concubine from an okay family, one of many, but she was also the mother of the Emperor's only surviving son. Now that Emperor died, and she's suddenly the regent. To say that she uses her time as regent is an understatement. She consolidates power, protects her son from rivals, while at the same time raising him in such a way as to ensure he can never rule independently from her, and positions herself as the true power of the Xing dynasty. The last dynasty that there was.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Yes. Apologies again to everybody for our Chinese pronunciation. So obviously the story of Xi Shi is a long and complex story, but at the heart of it is imperial power, right? This was what she was really good at demonstrating it, enforcing it, making people fall in line. And as so often throughout history, we see this, the answer is actually fashion. So Louis XIII built Versailles and put in all of these codes for his nobility so that nobody could afford to raise an army against him. And Zichy did very much something along this line. She signaled power and so created power for herself. So she was a very famous patron of lots of expensive materials and crafts, a true esthate. She was well into jade, she had beautiful lacquer objects, but she especially liked pink tourmaline. She had it carved into very famous snuff bottles. So this is the kind of most famous use of carved tourmaline and also jacket buttons, which sounds like the chicest thing I've ever heard.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah, I wonder how they work. Like they don't know.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Like I have a shirt from San Cristobal de las Casas with amber buttons.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Alright, okay. That's cool. I think I saw something just today with like an amber button thing.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

I mean, beautiful. And a way that gemstones very rarely use these days, except for maybe Mother of Pearl, which I don't think counts.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

No. Also very fragile.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

Yes. So this is great that Zhi gets really into this stuff because San Diego happens to have a lot of it. According to minor historian Peter Bancroft, so Grande, which is a reservation outside of San Diego, known for its pegmatite mines, delivered 120 tons of gem-grade tourmaline at a value of $800,000 between 1902 and 1910. $800,000 in 1902 money. So today it would be more than 60 million pounds. And as so often, the go-between was somebody who worked at Tiffany, right? Tiffany always seems to be involved in these big gemstone stories. The man in question was J.L. Tenenbaum. He was a gemologist and a mineral dealer. And he would basically get on the phone or on the Philofax or whatever the fuck they were using back then, take these orders for massive what smoke signals. Yeah, telegram, birds.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

All of that.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

He would take these orders for like a ton of pink tourmaline, get the money, and then just tell all these like local ranchers and cowboys to start mining, and they would just do it. Um it's pretty wild.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Imagine having that kind of wealth. It created an industry from nothing.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, that's that's actually unreal. I like this, so we're gonna make it a thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Like so cool. The ultimate tastemaker. So Simon, tell me a little bit about what was behind this love affair.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

So it had a lot to appeal to the Dowager Empress of China, in fact. First of all, the colour, and in the Qing, Qing, court, culture, colour mattered. And um pink and red were associated with vitality, prosperity, joy, feminine beauty, and imperial luxury. So Zichi loved pink and she commissioned a lot of it, silks, enamels, like all manner of things. As long as it was pink, she was into it. And uh of course, one of the most important things when you're looking at something for people to get excited about is that it's new. People like new things, and we're gonna get on to new things a bit later on. So large-scale deposits of pink tourmaline were relatively recently discovered, and tourmaline, which can be carved intricately and beautifully like nephrite jade, but it looks completely different. So it was appealing, and it was like so we're gonna liken it to having an iPod in 2001. Like if you had an iPod iPod in 2001, it was a bit of a flex. You could walk around and be like, hey, look at me, I've got an iPod. I've got like 500 songs all in this one small device. Whereas previous to that, you had to walk around with CDs in your bag and put them in a Sony CD walkman, and the bloody thing used to skip if you walked at any pace other than so you you could get those like ones that could um sort of stop it. It had look was like judder proof or something, but they weren't judder proof because if you walked too fast, the bloody thing would skip, and it was really, really annoying. And so I mean CDs are treacherous anyway, because you scratch them and they're screwed. That's enough about CDs. Something I learned this week actually is that you can polish gemstones using CDs.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Really?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Just put them on the lap and they use them as the polishing lap.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

No way.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Screw them down on the master lap, and you can polish the polish away on a CD.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Do they work well?

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Apparently, yeah, they're not n they're not particularly flat because obviously they're plasticky. So when you screw them down, if you screw them down, they can sort of like flex a little bit and then it's not it's not ideal from that sense. But people use them and like get a good polish on a gemstone from a CD. So there you go. So basically, the coolest people and had this had this new pink tourmaline and Zishi loved that.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

Yeah. And single-handedly blew up the Southern California mining industry, like created it. Unfortunately, as often happens, we are mortals, and the Dowager Empress Zishi died. And when she died, everything that she'd been holding together, I mean, an incredibly powerful woman who had consolidated power throughout her life. She banned footbinding, she was running the government. And with her gone, there was no center of gravity. So within two or three years, you know, her successor at the time was a child. That never really seems to go well. So there's a disastrous child regency, then there was a rebellion, and then 2,000-year-old imperial system collapses. And along with it, so does the tourmaline market. There is an apocryphal story. I don't know if this is true. Legend has it that Zishi loved the Californian pink tourmaline so much that she had her coffin made out of it, and that's what she was buried in. I don't know if that's true. What is true is that when the miners in California heard that she was dead, they basically just downed tools and walked away. They were like, well, this is over.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

To be fair, if you go to the American Natural History Museum, there are some whopping great crystals of L-bite tourmaline, like huge, and you could fit a person in them if you carved out of the middle. So this is not beyond the realms of possibility, especially if you've got limitless wealth.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Well, and it's that mythmaking that she did for pink tourmaline that I would argue is part of the myth making that has kept the tourmaline market going. I think tourmaline in particular is a stone that thrives on stories, and you have a few different varieties of it which have these really romantic stories, and that is part of why they're so desirable. We will touch on another one in just a little bit, but first let's come back down to earth a little bit. Let's go from the apocryphal to the ostensibly true, and let's do some testing. Simon, tell me about testing tourmaline.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

So as we told you in the last episode, tourmaline comes in many colours, which means it's quite difficult to identify just by looking at it. You shouldn't you shouldn't be doing that anyway. But sometimes you can see something and be like, hmm, I'm pretty sure that's that.

SPEAKER_02 15:40

I reckon that's a tourmaline.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

A couple of tests, and you're like, okay, that that confirms my suspicion. It is that. So basically, what are we trying to rule out here? So lots of things because it comes in lots of different guises. We're talking Imperial Topaz, aquamarine, emerald, red paste, any other red things, garnets, sapphire, spinels, but basically all of the gemstones, your tourmaline can pretty much look pretty similar to them. So you've got to get that testing equipment out. Observation is a good one because uh tourmaline has a very specific inclusion, which is my favorite.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Of all time. Simon's hands-down favorite inclusion of all time. He talks to me about it all the time.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

The reason it's my favorite is because I had a tourmaline that had a particularly good trichite inclusion. We're talking about trichite inclusions here, um, which is kind of like these intertwining, it kind of looks like a if you zoom out on a on a road system. And if you zoom out, uh there's like this network of roads intertwining with each other, and it kind of looks a bit webby, and and I saw, like we'd been talking about trichites in class, and I saw one and I saw it perfectly, and I was like, holy shit, that's cool. And it's kind of you know, like intertwining hair.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

That's like lugdite, which is my inperido is my favorite, but also least favourite inclusion. It's creepy.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

The perid I'm cutting at the minute actually has got some quite nice Ludwigite on the edge.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

It's that's quite cool. Sorry, there's a cat screaming at me. Carry on, Simon.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Okay, so these hair-like inclusions, these tend to form along crystallographic directions and can include other inclusions we can get, is like hollow growth tubes along the C axis, healed fractures, mineral inclusions, like your normal stuff. The thing you're looking out for is the trichides though, because that those hair-like inclusions are um gonna be pretty exclusive to tourmaline.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yes. More things you can see, needle-like inclusions parallel to the C axis, these can cause shawency, so star and cat's eye tourmaline is a thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah. Um in some stones you can see doubling of the back facets. It's got quite a big birefringence, so look out for that because that's gonna narrow things down a little bit. Yeah, it's anisotropic, you're gonna see um dichroism strongly, strong pleochroism.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Strongly dichroic. So it's darker down the C axis, uh, which is actually a really fun way if you just have like a rock, uh normal crystal that you're just turning, you can actually find where the C-axis is, even on a faceted stone, because it will get darker.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So because of the way that tourmaline grows, you tend to cut them with the table perpendicular to the C-axis. And then so if you do look down the girdle, as you like, along the length of the elongated gemstone, which is generally how they're cut, you are probably gonna it's gonna look darker along that way than it will if you look down the table, which is handy because generally I would say with tourmaline they can be quite dark, you're probably gonna want them to be lighter. So you would look up, you would cut them perpendicular to that C-axis to make them a bit lighter.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Exactly. A bit prettier. Of course, there are some caveats, there are always caveats, so some stones will show you two completely different colors rather than just darker and lighter. Some like yellow stones will actually have a quite weak response, even though you're trained to be looking for this strong response. So just be aware of that. And in dark stones, like all dark stones, you just can't see the response. It's not that it's not happening, it's just too dark to see. And green stones may show green and brown, which is quite fun. And just a note if you are taking the exam, if you're looking at a particolored tourmaline, which do exist, watermelon tourmalines, bicolor tourmalines, you need to list both pleochroic responses. So, what is your pink side doing? What's your green side doing?

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Good note. Very good.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Next up, refractometer. Simon, tell me about it.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Refractometer. So it has an RI between 1.61 to 1.66 and a birefringence, as we just mentioned, of 0.015 to 0.025. So quite big. You're gonna see two shadow edges, one moving, and one is going to be static.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Find this one of the more relaxing refractometer responses. I remember in our exam we had a pink tourmaline, and I was anxious about it, and it was so I was just like, let this be a tourmaline. Like everything is telling you that this is a tourmaline. Yeah. But just let it be a tourmaline, guys. Tourmaline's great. It could be there.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Trust your testing.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

If you do fancy it, you can UV a tourmaline. It's very inconsistent, so I wouldn't take this as Bible, guys. Most stones won't won't fluoresce, but of course, some will. So notably chrome tourmaline will glow yellowish under S UV, whereas pink stones might glow bluish. Sorry, I've these glow has lost its meaning to me. I've said it so many times.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Glow.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Glow blue in shortwave UV as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

You can check for a spectrum, but you're not going to really have anything that is pretty concrete. As we said in the last episode, uh Tourmaline is made up of all manner of things. So you're going to see absorption patterns that are indicative of the chemicals that are involved, but there's lots of them, so you're not going to get a whole lot of useful information from the spectroscope, and you're not really expected to know them because the variation is so broad.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Indeed. Don't forget, py Tormaline is pyroelectric. Is it going to help you in the exam? Probably not. Is it fun at parties? Hell yes. Move some ash, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

The ash the Ashenstricker.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Ashenstricken.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Ashen that.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

We are going to get cancelled so hard for this up that we've like insulted every culture on the globe.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Listen, I'm English. We don't know any other languages.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Alright, Simon, tell me about treatments for tourmaline.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

So, like mini-coloured stones, tourmaline can be treated to enhance or improve the colour. And this is primarily done through heating and irradiation. So irradiation can enhance the colour of some rubulites, so it can turn very pale material into a more red or pink tone. And if you heat stones that have maybe a green or blue coloration to them, um yellow tourmaline can be heated as well, which you will remove the brown and orange component. But going back to the green and blue ones, this is when we're starting to talk about and consider these very valuable ones.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

There are some tourmalines that are just normal blue and green tourmalines. And you light these or you heat these, they get a little lighter. That's lovely.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Tend to be caused by iron.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Exactly. There is another kind of tourmaline that does something a little bit different. Simon, tell me about it and then tell us about that too.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

If you find tourmaline that maybe has a pink or blue-grey coloration, then perhaps you can heat it. And if it contains copper in the crystal lattice, it might very well become the hallowed peribha, the bright windowing blue colouration of tourmaline, which is the most valuable of them all. When you heat this material that contains copper in it, so paribotourmaline also contains manganese. What you're basically doing is you're suppressing the manganese in it and suppressing the sort of pinkish coloration, the pinky violet colouration, and that's going to enhance the bright windalline blue. It is important to mention now, actually, that Piba tourmaline, which we're going to talk about next, is Cuprian, so it's copper bearing. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be this electric blue colour. Copper bearing tourmaline comes in a variety of colours. And actually, Rosie, friend of the pod, recently had her fingernails painted in all of the colours of copper tourmaline.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

That's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

The whole colour range. And if you go onto SSEF's website, you can see an image of the there are 11 colours on SSEF's website, and they range from sort of violet purple through to the blues. The blues will tend to be the ones that are considered puriba or peribotype, down to the greens at the end. So the purpley ones at the beginning and the greeny ones at the end would be copper-bearing tourmaline, whereas the ones sort of in the middle in the blue range might be considered as the Piriba ones.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah. Um ask Rosie to send you a picture of her nails.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Honestly, that is so cool.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

Yeah, she literally so there's eleven colours in SSEF's picture, and she obviously had to decide which one to eliminate. You can ask her.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

So Simon has teed us up, and I'm now going to ask him to take a once again. We're not going straight to Pariba. We are instead going it's still the nineties, so we've gone forward ninety years. The year is 1990, the location, the world-famous Tucson Gem Show. Simon set the scene, put us on the ground. What are we seeing? What's going on? What's the gas?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

So basically you turn up at the Tucson Gem stow and you see this stone. It's electric blue, it's a tourmaline, it's from Brazil, and you're like, what the dickens is that? Why is it so bright? Why is it glowing? It's literally glowing before my eyes. It's got it's radiating something. It's like the colour is beyond the material. And you go up and be like, Whoa, what is this, my friend? And he goes, Oh, this is this stuff that I just found. How much is it? And he's gonna be like, Well, I don't know, you can have it for a few hundred dollars a carrot, and you go, Okay, well, like I really like it. It's very, very nice indeed. I'm going to consider buying that. But let me look round the rest of the show.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Like that's pretty normal. And that is because, of course, we are dealing with the Pariba tourmaline. This is without a doubt the most precious tourmaline in the sense of its costs, of course, but also its rarity and its fame and desirability outside of the jewelry trade. So if your mom's best friend knows one kind of tourmaline, it's probably going to be a Pariba. It's very famous in its own right. And it's also a really important one to understand because it is huge for the gem trade.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah. And like if you see a top quality Pariba, it is quite mesmerizing. So you can sort of get your head around why the value shot up and particularly stuff from Pariba State, Brazil, is like ridiculously expensive because we are now in the future. We physically live in the future from this point, and it's loads of money.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yes. So, as a general guide for this section, guys, a lot of this is from an early article in Gems and Gemology. It's called, very excitingly, An Update on Pariba Tourmaline from Brazil. It's authored by James E. Shigley et al. You can find it on the website still. And according to our authors, in 1981, the Brazilian Geological Survey documented pegmatites and tourmaline occurrences around Moro Alto, which is in the state of Pariba in Brazil. And this kind of caught the imagination of a dude called Heator Barbosa. As so often in these stories, there's one person who just will not give up until they find something amazing. He had this hunch that there was going to be an amazing tourmaline in this area, and he just started digging. So he organized this initial mining. He didn't have any money. The local people thought he was crazy, but he didn't give up. And in 1987, his team discovered the first electric blue tourmaline. How did they get there? Simon, let's talk about geology.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Okay. So 650 to 480 million years ago, there was some geological drama. Braziliano Pan-African Orogeny. Now, orogeny, for people that don't know, the Craig will like this, is it comes from the Greek. So it comes from the Greek, the Greek.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

A little etymology with your geology.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Yeah. It comes from the Greek oros meaning mountain and genesis meaning origin creation. So this is continental scale tectonic system that took place before Africa and South America had split. So they were sort of together. So the same geology in Nigeria as in Brazil. And this will become important later because during this orogeny, which is essentially a mountain building tectonic event, a lot of pegmatites were created. We know that tourmaline comes from pegmatites. So in particular, it loves the smaller pig pegmatites that are found in this region, and specifically an area about 75 by 50 kilometers just south of the town of Kurisnovos. It's probably wrong. These pegmatites tend to have a rose quartz core surrounded by precious materials like beryl, garnet, and you guessed it, tourmaline. So if the surrounding rock has some copper in it as well, then we are really cooking because that's when we're going to get this electric blue color. That's where we're getting our pariba, as it's called, tourmaline.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Exactly. And from the second that this stuff hits the market, it is going crazy. It is selling in crazy numbers, but people can't get enough of it. And a big part of the reason why is that back home in Brazil, this stuff is still being mined by candlelight with handheld tools. They're literally just chipping away at rocks. They are hoisting the pigmentite material to the surface in buckets, they're running it through a sieve, and then they're hand picking the tourmaline out. It's a serious bottleneck, and it's made worse by the usual drama that accompanies discoveries like this. Like this is a literal fortune in gemstones. Everybody wants a piece. So you've got illegal mines popping up, you've got ownership disputes, you've got a lengthy court case, which involves not just our friend Haytor, but also other mine owners, foreign investors, local people, and also a bunch of Brazilian politicians that were just like, can we get a piece of this? Shut down production entirely for almost four years in the 1990s.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yes. And in our notes here, there is a picture of Haytor. He has a very fun moustache.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

He does indeed. And the hard hat. So safety first. Thank you, Haytor.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Yes. So Haytor eventually secured legal rights to a huge chunk of the area and investment secured, brought in some proper technology. He also started going through alluvial deposits nearby, which garnered some results as well. So what makes his tourmaline so special? Well, it's the colour. Simple as that. As with a lot of gemstones, it's the colour. Now the copper content produces the most, uh produces this very bul very desirable colour. Um and like we said, you can heat them to bring out the colour by suppressing that manganese. Um but yeah, this is this is Piriba.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Exactly. And of course, there is material that comes out of the ground perfect, it doesn't need any heat treatment. That is called heterita, is the trade name that Heator Barbosa and his associates used for this. It was intense blue to blue-green tourmaline, it didn't need to be heat treated. You wouldn't use this in the trade, but I like that he named it after himself.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Which you would do.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

Little Hector, I believe, is the translation of that.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

That makes sense. So so Periba tourmaline carries the name of its birthplace, if you like, its original locality. But it's not the only place in the world we can find copper-bearing blue tourmaline because of the fact that the continents used to be together and they split apart. This is this Braziliano Pan-African orogeny.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yes. And interestingly, Piriba tourmaline actually exhibits minimal pleochroism. So we were talking about how strongly dichroic most tourmaline is, not the case for periba, which means that you can facet it in any orientation. This is super useful, obviously, because the rough is of such high value. And so a lot of the consideration here is going to be how can I maximize the yield from this? So you can see peribatourmalines in all kinds of crazy cuts because people just don't want that 50% wastage that you would get with a lesser stone. Some cutters, apparently, this is pure gossip, but some cutters do feel that these tourmalines are more resistant to chipping during manufacture than other tourmalines.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Which is handy.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Indeed. They are stunning, but they are also expensive as fuck. Uh, and they're also consistently popular. So I was actually speaking to one of my stone dealers a couple of weeks ago. I was asking him about demand for Pariba, and he was telling me that he never sees a dip in demand. Like everybody knows about it. As long as he has it, he's gonna sell it. It has a totally enduring appeal. And on that, come on.

SPEAKER_00 32:33

So when we're when we're talking about Pariba, there was a big debate a little while ago as to whether you could call Pariba that isn't from Brazil Pariba.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Well, it's a Pariba type.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yeah, exactly. So Pariba type was a term that you can use. But I think it's now widely accepted that you can call this copper-bearing electric blue tourmaline from places like Nigeria and Mozambique, which are the other main places where you get it from, you can call them Pariba tourmaline. And then you might want to look at the locality bit to confirm whether you've got Brazilian Pariba type or Pariba tourmaline or if you've got one from somewhere else. There's a bit of a value difference.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

There is, but what I would say is in this article, they actually tested the chemical composition of the kind of original highest quality Periba tourmalines against the Nigerian material. And the Nigerian material was actually much more like the highest quality Pariba material than other mines in the same area in Brazil. So because of the way that the geology shook down, you're actually getting something exactly the same just across the world because initially it was all one thing.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

But papers are always going to want them up from the original place, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 33:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

That's just the way we go.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

That's called branding, y'all. Your brand is remote.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Let's talk about some famous tourmalines. Why don't we start with um a famous periba? You love paribas.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

A famous pariba is, for one thing, it's enormous. It's true. And it's called the Ethereal Carolina Divine Pariba, and it's a hundred and ninety-one point eight seven carat, and it's one of the biggest faceted paribas ever discover. It's intensely neon, it's very big, it's in a pretty gnarly looking item of jewelry.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

I find it pretty hideous, but I wonder if it will grow on me. It's like very ostentatious.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

You think the stone is ostentatious or the thing that it's set in.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

The stone is beautiful, but it's set it is quite ostentatious.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

I would agree. Yeah. It's that is that is an acquired taste, fish for certain. It currently holds the world record for cut peruba tourmaline carrot weight, and it's in a billionaire's private collection, apparently, along with a load of other cool stuff, which we don't get to see.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yeah. Shout out to the billionaire class. The interesting thing about tourmaline, it doesn't really have the same star power that something like a corundum would have. But what it does is it really illustrates like why certain stones are famous. So that the Pariba that we've just discussed, what is it actually called?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

The ethereal Carolina.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Yeah. That's famous because it's big and it's expensive, right? But you have other stones that are famous because of the history. I'm thinking specifically of when we talked about spinel, you know, we talk ad nauseum about the black prince's ruby, which is actually a spinel, okay? But the same thing happened to Tourmaline, and they actually ended up in the Russian crown jewels. So in Russia, there is there was a collection of redstones that everybody assumed were rubies. One of them is on top of an imperial crown, one of them was set by Faberger. There was another that was set by Bolan, like very famous jewelers worked with them. The gag is actually a rubulite tourmaline. So they were actually mined in Siberia and they were called Siberian rubies. They weren't rubies. There are no rubies in Siberia, but there are tourmaline deposits in the Ural Mountains. So back in the day when stones were classed by color alone, they kind of snuck into the Romanov treasury and then they got made into these beautiful pieces of art. And it was only in the 1800s that the chemical and optical properties of these stones could be properly analyzed. So they got ratted out, but that doesn't make them any less valuable, just changed their significance a little bit. They're still in these beautiful, like masterworks by incredible artists.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Yeah, like you say, their value is more attributed to the fact that they're in that item of jewelry and because of the provenance, if you like, rather than actually it being a whopping grape rare gemstone.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Exactly. And if someone tries to tell you a Siberian ruby, tell them no, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Well, unless you want a Rubulite and you pay in the appropriate price for a Rubulite.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Then you can say yes, please. That's lovely. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Now tell us about the last stone. When I saw this, I immediately thought of you, Salmon. This looks like something you travel to see.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Yeah. So this is called the Lidicote Tourmaline Slice, and it's pretty gnarly. It's kind of concentric, triangular, sort of disc type thing. It's lots of triangles sort of coming out, and they're all different colours in different sort of layers.

SPEAKER_02 37:08

So the colour is obviously within a hexagon.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Within a hexagon. Yes, that's correct. It is in the Smithsonian, and you should Google it. So Google Lidicote Tourmaline Slice and you will see this. It kind of looks a bit like the Michael Jordan thing in the middle, you know, the Michael Jordan logo where he's sort of like doing the dunk. Yeah, like jumping.

unknown 37:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

I was gonna say it looks like stained glass almost. It's really quite stunning.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

It looks like stained glass. Obviously, they've quite cleverly put a backlight through it to show the colours.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Suspend your disbelief.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

I'm not suspending any disbelief. That's what you have to do to see things. Put light on them. Fucking hell, if we haven't spoken about that enough.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

It is very beautiful, guys. It's got geometry, it's got color zoning, it's got crystallography. It was actually mined in Minas Herez in Brazil, and it was named after Richard Liddicote. Yes, who led the GIA. So I don't know, we're enemies. But JK, I love the GIA. The great guy.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Yeah. Richard Liddicote, the Liddicote Tourmaline Slice. Look it up. We'll post it on our Instagram, no doubt.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

We absolutely will, if I remember. That was that's all that's all the notes. But what are your news and views, Simon, on tourmalines?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

I am increasingly getting into tourmaline. We've got some lovely ones at work. We are investing in them because people are. I sold one this week. I sold a really nice pink one this week.

SPEAKER_01 38:27

Lovely.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

So yeah, get on the tourmaline train. Because actually, interestingly, we had a customer in on Saturday, yesterday, from this is the day we're recording, this was yesterday, and she was interested in tourmaline. My colleague told her that we do a podcast, and uh she asked me the name of the podcast, and I said um and asked me if we had done an episode in Tourmaline, and I was like, Well, you'll never guess what. We only have. We've done two. So if you are listening to the Hello, nice lady, thank you. I didn't catch your name, but if you do happen to listen to this, shout out to you, and I hope you have enjoyed learning about Tourmaline.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Indeed. Guys, as always, thank you so much for joining us. Always a pleasure. We will be back.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Yes, with an interview or two. Something. We'll come back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

We'll be here. Don't worry. In the meantime, we're not lost to you. You can always find us on Instagram at Fascination Gemology, or you can email us fascination at fascination.co.uk. Uh yeah, a little vocal fry for you at the end here.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

Super duper.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Great. Well, have a great week, guys. We will see you soon. Happy geming.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Happy geming.